Carpooling is a way of life for many people in the US, with parents running their kids to school, but also with work colleagues sharing lifts to and from the office, with everyone chipping in to help with petrol costs and the like.

Over here it’s a slightly different story; for many it seems, the old British adage of ‘my home is my castle’ seems to extend to the car, and the train seat – I can remember catching the train to college in the mornings and feeling loath to give up the adjacent seat to anybody except an expecting lady. Though I’m happy to budge up for anyone these days (provided that they aren’t drunk, morbidly obese, or have BO) I’ll still take a seat on my own if given the option.

Carpooling is actually something I’ve been considering doing recently – admittedly not being able to drive by the age of 24 is pretty lame, but I’ve (finally) got the date set for my test (2 weeks tomorrow) and I’m looking forwards to tearing up the mountainous pile of used train tickets that are sitting on my desk and never having to take the train to work again.

Two of my fellow commutees have said they will ‘carpool’ with me, giving me a fixed amount each week to help cover for the cost of fuel, which works out being significantly cheaper than getting the train for them, and will help me out with the rising cost of fuel, insurance, cover, and general maintenance.

Recent surveys show that the UK is leading the way in a Europe-wide ‘Carpool Revolution’, a cultural shift perhaps necessitated by costs and current economic conditions, much like traditional English cooking.

Liftshare (www.liftshare.org) is a search engine that matches journeys for people looking for potential carpooling buddies. “People are discovering the many benefits of car sharing because the fuel price is a real worry to a lot of people,” says Liftshare spokesperson Cecilia Bromley-Martin. In the past three months, demand has soared; roughly 5,000 people registered this April, with close to 15,000 in June. The company also organise National Liftshare Day on the 9th of June, which means we’ve missed it for the purposes of this blog post, but like National Stop Smoking Day, the idea is that everyone continues afterwards.

The Paris-based think tank IEA (International Energy Agency), the decline in driving is the same across Europe. “The rest of Europe is pretty much in line with that, although in the UK the effect is slightly higher because prices are higher [there] than elsewhere,” says Eduardo Lopez, an oil market demand expert at the IEA. Prices higher in the UK than they are elsewhere? Pull the other one Eduardo.

The figures suggest that carpooling has arrived in the UK, and looks as though its going to be here for some time; whether it stays for good is another matter.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Car Insurance, Savings, Vehicle Breakdown Cover. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.